Art Bell, Radio’s Most Popular Weirdo, Returns

Art Bell photographed at his home Pahrump, Nevada, on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013.

I used to frequent a (now-shuttered) website called Fine
Art. There I encountered a long-dormant culture I could find nowhere
else, aesthetically significant works presented in still effective but
slightly altered-from-the-original forms. I learned — well, no, I
experienced — new things, concepts, ideas and visions once lamentably
distant from my consciousness.

The “Art” in the title, though, didn’t refer to painting, sculpture,
film or photography. The name instead came from Art Bell, a 68-year-old
radio talker whose memorably terrifying 1990s and early-2000s Coast to
Coast AM broadcasts about UFOs, remote viewing, science, monsters,
ghosts, government conspiracies (and, really, anything else) streamed
there. Archival recordings of old Bell shows flowed all over the web for
years, until several streams dried up within the last three months. (Do
not despair. Here’s a good one, from a frantic Area 51 employee, and here’s another, which contains what purports to be Bigfoot’s scream. There are plenty of full shows on YouTube and on archive.org.)

But the streams’ vanishing heralded good news: More than a decade
after he retired as the full-time Coast host, and after several false
starts, Bell was returning to radio. His new show, Art Bell’s Dark
Matter, premieres Monday night at 10 p.m. Eastern on Sirius XM’s Indie
Talk channel. (The toll-free call-in line? 1-855-REAL-UFO.) In late
August, I visited Bell at his home studio in the high desert of Pahrump,
Nev. (“A lot of people who come out here from the big cities tend to
feel weird,” he told me. No kidding — he had a plastic alien head on his
porch.) I profiled him in this week’s magazine.Many, many people have missed Art Bell. Take it not from the now-defunct streaming sites, or his busy Facebook page, or the chirping at the Fantastic Forum.
Just look at the numbers. Sirius XM has a broad user base — the
satellite-radio provider has 25 million subscribers overall — but Bell’s
used to the biggest of numbers. Coast to Coast was syndicated to over
500 North American stations by the end of his run. He spoke to 10 to 15
million listeners per week, fourth among all talk-show hosts of the era,
despite broadcasting from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. Eastern. His
Marlboro-Lights-weathered voice blanketed the continent after dark,
reliably chilling his audience of insomniacs, truckers, night-shift
workers, and whoever else might be alone with a radio late at night.Bell’s ratings success was all the more surprising because of how he
deviated from the dominant talk-radio format. Conservative chatter owned
the medium (think Rush Limbaugh,
Dr. Laura) but all that bored Bell — he had started out in Vegas as a
right-wing host in the ’80s, but his show’s ratings didn’t take off
until he started talking about the paranormal. He was different, fed up
with the government not because of some tax increase or a bad vote but
because of what they were hiding. Where others had rage, he had
skepticism, and lots of it.Accordingly, he became something of a cultural phenomenon. National media outlets, including TIME, blamed
him in part for the Heaven’s Gate cult’s mass suicide in 1997. (The
cult’s leader said its members would be able to board a mysterious craft
supposedly trailing the Hale-Bopp comet if they killed themselves, and
at least two of Bell’s guests had reported seeing such a UFO. He
discredited their stories afterward, but not in time to avoid some scientists’ wrath.)
And Bell’s not-infrequent retirements motivated by family turmoil — his
son was molested by a teacher, and then two shortwave radio hosts
accused him of the crime — ensured that he would draw only more attention.
When he returned to the air full-time, in 2001, and said it was for
good, he lasted only a year and a half longer before taking on a
part-time load. More personal misfortune followed: Bell’s third wife,
Ramona, died of an asthma attack while they were vacationing in the
couple’s RV. Three months later, Bell moved to the Philippines to marry, Airyn, a college student 39 years his junior. They soon had a daughter, Asia, who is now six.Bell’s Coast to Coast hosting duties gradually tapered off before he
made his final appearance on Halloween 2010, a radio legend severed for
good — by choice — from the iconic show he founded.Now, he returns. Old Coast hand Michio Kaku, the theoretical
physicist, will be his first guest, and Ross Mitchell, the old Coast
announcer, will do Bell’s intro and bumpers. I asked Bell what he’d do
on this show that he didn’t do enough of on the old show. He says he’s
really eager to talk about life after death.***Here’s some more from the day I spent with Art Bell:• What does Bell think of the man who replaced him on Coast, George
Noory? He’s a lazy broadcaster, Bell says, indifferent to what he puts
on the air. “This fellow, half the time, he doesn’t sound like he’s
listening to his guest. He’ll come back and ask a question that had just
been answered five minutes previously. Or he’ll inject a complete non
sequitur. The guest will be talking about Bigfoot, and he’ll ask, ‘Well,
does that have something to do with angels?’” Worse, “there’s a lot
more politics in it, a lot more medical crap in it, a lot of New Age-y
crap that I won’t touch. I prefer science.” Bell hopes competition will
raise all boats. “It better—otherwise George’ll be a submarine.” Fans
seem to agree: The first Google autocomplete hit on Noory’s name is “George Noory sucks.”• Bell’s former syndicator, Clear Channel-owned Premiere Networks,
rebroadcasts his old shows on Saturday nights. He hates this. “Are they
doing it just to irritate me?” he asks. He has no legal rights to the
shows, but he wants them off the air. Premiere’s spokesperson:
“Somewhere in Time with Art Bell remains very popular… To remove the
show from our weekend lineup would be a disservice to those affiliates
and their listeners, many of whom have already expressed their desire to
keep the show on the air.”• Sirius XM built Bell a new studio in the guest house on his
property. (Many have called it a “compound,” but Bell says he hates
that. Fine. It’s a fenced-in collection of one-story buildings,
satellite dishes and radio antennas on a plot of land in the desert. Not
a compound.) He used to broadcast from a ham radio room in the main
house, but his six-year-old daughter now sleeps in the next bedroom, and
he doesn’t want to scare her. The new studio has much less equipment
than his old room — computers have come a long way since he quit Coast —
but he has kept his trusty .40-caliber Glock 22, in a desk drawer.
(“I’m not a gun nut,” he says. “But go out on my porch, look
around—what’s there? Zero, nothing. If I had a problem out here, well,
the police would arrive just in time to draw the chalk outline on my
floor.”)• With Whitley Strieber, a horror novelist, Bell co-wrote The Coming
Global Superstorm, the book Roland Emmerich made into The Day After
Tomorrow, the Dennis Quaid disaster movie. (Bell laments that he got all
of his royalties from the movie, which made $544 million at the box
office, up front.) For all of scientists’ occasional qualms with Coast,
Bell did help explain global warming to a big audience.• Bell’s no kook. He’s after “the sane fringe,” he says. His most
out-there theory, he claims, concerns the crash of TWA Flight 800—Bell
says the government knows why that plane left the sky, and isn’t saying.
“But that’s about as fringy as I get. The 9/11 truthers hate my guts.”• Bell’s show will rerun immediately after it airs, but it won’t play
during the daytime. Bell has asked Sirius XM to confine re-airings to
the night, when the mood is right.• Bell, a self-described news junkie, says there’s only one decent
cable news outfit. (And it’s not CNN, the one he was tuned to during our
visit.) “CNN is destroying their franchise. They’ve become either the
trial network or the story network. They grab onto a goddamn story and
go for a week, or two weeks, with the same story all frigging day long.
They used to be a news organization. Give me Al-Jazeera any day of the
week. You want real news, go to Al-Jazeera!”

Orlando, Fla. – The j3FILMS documentary
— extraordinary: the Stan Romanek story
— has been named an official selection of the 2013 Ft. Lauderdale International
Film Festival (FLIFF). The premiere is set for Saturday, Nov. 2 at 3 p.m. at the
Festival’s showcase theatre – Cinema Paradiso – located in downtown Ft.
Lauderdale.

Stan Romanek claims to be at the center
of world’s most documented extraterrestrial contact story, and the multitude of
evidence accumulated over the past decade has convinced thousands around the
world his story is true. This documentary film takes audiences on a journey
through Stan’s past, present and future with one goal in mind: Help the world
understand that no one knowingly chooses the challenges Stan and his
family have endured over the past decade.

“This
project has taken us on a fascinating journey, and we’ve all learned a great
deal in the process of making this film,” says Jack Roth, one of the documentary’s
producers. “We set out to document a controversial and emotional story, and our
goal has always been to create a compelling and objective narrative about one
man’s evolution through a life he didn’t choose.”

The
film’s director, Jon Sumple, sees this as a story of survival in the face of
adversity, rather than just another film recounting eyewitness UFO experiences.
“Simply put, the film illustrates how an ordinary man and his family have been
transformed by extraordinary experiences,” he explains. “Some viewers may not
believe in life beyond planet Earth when they leave the theatre, but they will
surely believe Stan does. The film's intention is not to prove the existence of
UFOs and extraterrestrials, but it does pose the question: What if this is all
true?”

extraordinary:
the Stan Romanek story will also be screened at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 4 at the
Cinema Paradiso Hollywood; at 2 p.m. on Nov. 5 at the Muvico Pompano; and at
6:30 p.m. on Nov. 10 at the Sunrise Civic Center.

About
j3FILMS:
j3FILMS is a production company with deep ties to the communities surrounding
the unexplained. Having worked extensively with researchers, investigative
journalists and eyewitnesses, the principals of j3FILMS are dedicated to
presenting material that encourages audiences to ask questions and challenge
conventional wisdom. Driven by the fascinating lure of unsolved mysteries, j3FILMS
has two objectives: entertain and educate. By tapping into the innate human desire
to explore the unknown, j3FILMS takes audiences on an emotional journey of
discovery.

About
FLIFF:
Now in its 28th year, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival is held annually fromlate October – mid November and reels out over 200 films from
around the globe. During the festival, films are divided into the following
sidebars: Competition Films, World Films, American Independents, Documentaries,
Shorts, Sunshine Celluloid, Children’s Films, Gay and Lesbian Films, and
Retrospective and Tribute Films. Filmmakers and celebrities attend many of
the screenings and events during the festival, where parties and gatherings at
area “hot spots”, on board yachts, and on the beach will provide audiences an
opportunity to hob knob with film talent and other movie buffs.

For
ticket, festival and accommodation information, go to the Ft. Lauderdale
International Film Festival website at www.fliff.com. For more
information on extraordinary: the Stan
Romanek story, visit www.j3FILMS.com
or contact Jack Roth at jack@j3films.com.